Story Synopsis

17-07

64079 reads

Deployment Strategy

In 2055, artificial intelligence is possible. Society's increasing dependence on technology is equaled only by its vulnerability to it. The nearly bankrupt United States Homeland Security Cyber Crimer Division struggles to enforce the paranoid laws of the world's last superpower and stem defections of rogue AI programmers to renegade nations. Lt. James Lee, computer psychologist, embarks on his first assignment. His wits and training will be put to the test. But what about his beliefs? In a time of self-aware software, who exactly is endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights? Man? Machine?

Director Statement

As a software developer, I am constantly searching for ways technology can be used to enhance the world we live in. So it's no coincidence that the idea for Deployment Strategy came to me in the office. Set 50 years in the future, the film builds upon what I see as current day trends. Specifically, technology's role in our society is growing and changing faster than our own ability to understand its implications. Disruptive technological innovations are creating spiritual, cultural, and political tremors in our society.

We have the ability to create a genetic duplicate of a living organism. How does that effect our understanding of the soul? We can make exact replicas of software for virtually no resources and swap them over broadband networks. How does this effect our concept of ownership and value? And what if, someday soon, artificial life in the form of self-aware software, can be replicated, distributed, and re-programmed just as easily? How will we welcome artificial intelligence? As threats to be protected from, power to be wielded, or simply life to be respected?

Deployment Strategy gives us a glimpse of how we might answer these questions, but the time to play out scenarios in the fictional world is growing short. Moore's Law dictates that computer chip power will double roughly every 8 months. By most accounts the computational capacity of the human brain will be eclipsed within the next decade. So perhaps the science-fiction junkie and the technologist in me both stem from the same code branch. Both are constantly asking, "What if?" with the former paving the way for the latter.